The Daily Call – March 7, 2014

BY ANDRES FOCIL

@RazorbackBSB opens play at the Cal Baseball Classic in Berkeley, Calif., today. Arkansas faces San Francisco at 4:30 p.m. CT today, Tulane at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow and a doubleheader with host Cal beginning at 3 p.m. Sunday. Before the Razorbacks headed west for their first road trip of the season, junior left fielder and Tucson, Ariz., native Joe Serrano answered questions about the trip. Q: What is the importance for you in playing on the West coast? A: it’s always nice getting to go back to my side of the country. I’m one of the only people on the team from out west, and it’s important for me because a lot of my family gets to go there. It’s about a 10-hour drive to Berkeley from Tucson, which is not too bad of a drive. It will be nice to see my family. I haven’t seen some of them in a long time. Q: What are some highlights from road trips like the one this week? A: We get to travel more guys than just the travel squad, so it helps with team bonding. It’s always good to start the first trip in a great area of the country. I think everyone will enjoy it a lot and we will be a better team because of it. Q: Is there a different approach to a road trip compared to playing at Baum Stadium? A: You know it’s going to be different than at home. You don’t have 10,000 fans cheering for you and instead could have a few thousand rooting against you. The room for error is smaller than playing at home, but if you’re a baseball player almost half of your season is away so you have to learn to deal with it. We take it as just another game and not make it any bigger than that. Q: There are many Razorbacks making their first road trip this week. What do you remember about your first road trip at Arkansas? A: My first trip was to the Houston College Classic. We played Houston, Texas Tech and Texas at Minute Maid Park, where the Astros play. I didn’t play that much, but I was put in to pinch hit against Texas and ended up 2-for-2 with a walk and an RBI that helped put us ahead of Texas and our pitching staff shut them down after that. It was a great experience. We had a lot of fun in the hotel. You looked at it as a little bit of a vacation but then knew when to grind to get a victory. Q: What has been your favorite trip at Arkansas? A: By far Omaha for the College World Series in 2012. It’s just unreal in Omaha. They do a regular wave around the stadium and then a very, very fast wave that got around the entire stadium in about five seconds and then a super slow wave that took about a minute to get around. The entire atmosphere there is awesome. I hope that we are blessed enough to be able to go to Omaha again this year. We are going to put in the work and try to get there. I feel like that’s probably the highlight of my career.

The complete game notes packet can be found here.

Seven #SwimHOGS Selected To Attend NCAA Championships For the second consecutive year, seven swimmers from @RazorbackSwim were selected to attend the NCAA Championships held in Minneapolis, Minn., from March 20-22. Seven qualifiers ties the program record for number of women sent to NCAAs set last season, and swimmers will participate in 10 individual events and four relays, the most events in program history. Senior Nicole Menzel (Hilton Head, S.C.), juniors Nikki Daniels (Wichita, Kan.) and Susanna White (Forest, Va) and sophomore Anna Mayfield (San Antonio, Texas) were among Division I swimmers invited the participate in individual events. Each swimmer will also contribute to the relay teams. For more information on the NCAA Championships and Arkansas’ qualifiers, click here.

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